[Kzyxtalk] A note to the board members of KZYX. (Written email reply requested from each board member.)

[Marco McClean]

A note to the board members of KZYX. (Written email reply requested from 
each board member.)

Marco here. One thing that struck me during the Fort Bragg MCPB board 
meeting was how board members and their friends in the crowd so clearly 
felt that it's ridiculous to even consider restructuring to be able to 
pay airpeople. But consider: KZYX is paying hundreds of thousands of 
dollars every year to retain superfluous bureaucrats who are /not/ 
talented people sitting at a microphone connected to a transmitter. And 
paying nothing to those who are. John Coate is getting $60,000 per year 
--that's half a million ($500,000) dollars in a little over eight 
years-- and what is he working on now? A web jukebox so a few people can 
click to hear shows on demand. Gimcracks and gewgaws that have nothing 
to do with radio. And the result is the station has to limp along on 
old, unreliable equipment that frequently fails utterly. Think of how 
much equipment could simply be bought new and replaced on a regular 
schedule, like changing the oil in your car, if you weren't paying just 
John Coate quite so much, if you were instead paying him by the hour for 
the few basic tasks that are actually required of a radio station 
manager, that KNYO's manager, say, performs in an afternoon per month. 
And then there's David Steffen-- KZYX's "Business Support Coordinator"? 
Why would a non-profit community radio station need a business support 
coordinator, whatever that is, and pay him $40,000 a year, yet? And Mary 
Aigner the program director-- what is she doing that's worth whatever 
you're paying her? If that's also $40,000 a year, then divide that by 
$50 and you get 800 (eight hundred) yearly memberships diverted to go 
just to Mary-- for what, exactly, compared to someone preparing all 
during the week, every week, to do a live show the best he or she can 
and then doing it. Why should management be paid so exorbitantly merely 
to show up, and airpeople who show up and in addition do radio not be 
paid at all?

If you really want to further dilute your radio mission in a web startup 
adventure, beyond just having a website with the show and events 
schedule on it, then why do you even need the broadcast license? A 
scarce educational-band radio broadcast license to blanket the county 
should be held by people dedicated to doing radio. And radio is cheap. 
At ten cents per kilowatt-hour and figuring in waste heat your 
1,000-watt main transmitter costs only about $5 a day to operate. Your 
two 30-watt translator stations together cost less than fifty cents a 
day. I think you've forgotten this, if you ever knew it. Your entire 
operation-- the main transmitter, the STLs, the translator stations, 
tower fees, music publisher fees, power and water, phones, internet 
service, all the studios, engineering service /and pay for airpeople/-- 
can be well-maintained for about a third of the money you're burning now 
in counterproductive busy-work. You might never have to do more than one 
egregiously unlistenable pledge week per year ever again, let alone 
three or four. The first step to making KZYX a real community radio 
station for Mendocino County is to cut the fat at the top.

And I'd be on about this even if my show were on KZYX. It's not. I want 
to ask Stuart Campbell a few questions now. Stuart, is your show 
worthwhile and interesting and an asset to the station? Are you good at 
it, and are you proud of the show? Now, try to put yourself in my shoes. 
Imagine you weren't on the board of directors, that you brought your 
show as a finished proven product to KZYX, and you waited and waited 
--waited for years-- and when you asked what progress was being made to 
put your show on the schedule you got no answer at all. And when you 
wrote to the manager, he told you /he/ wasn't the program director. And 
when you asked, "What do I have to do to get my show on KZYX?" the 
manager said, "I guess you have to convince Mary." And when you stopped 
by the station to talk about it you were treated as though you were an 
unwanted intrusion and told to use the telephone next time. What would 
you do then? Go to the board of directors? They'd tell you /they/ have 
no control over who's on the air and who's not. Then what would you do? 
Really-- it's a Kafka story you have set up there, Stuart, and it's been 
that way since the beginning.

I waited a long time to speak up. Much longer than I think any of you 
would have. The situation has got to change. And you have to change it, 
because if not you, who? And if not now, when? And if not at all, why not?

I want and deserve a written reply from each board member. I'll read the 
replies on my show on KNYO in Fort Bragg, whose entire yearly budget 
--for everything-- is about a fifth of just what you're paying your 
general manager.

Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

-------------------